144 STATE IJOAIID OF AGRICULTURE. 



a hard cloddy iield. A warm, rich, mellow soil you must have to get a good 

 growth of corn. This you cannot have if you plow too early. I know the 

 temptation is great to begin plowing early, and very thrifty farmers dislike to 

 be last in planting. Better by far is it to be a week or ten days behind your 

 neighbor with your i)lowing if by this means you can come out ahead of him 

 in the fall iifteen or twenty bushels per acre. 



Of course the rule suggested is not so important on our light sandy or loamy 

 soils, but on heavy soils composed largely of clay it is imperative. As to the 

 precise time that plowing for corn should begin, no definite rule can be given. 

 The location and nature of the soil together with the season must determine. 



Many a farmer while cultivating his corn finds it growing slowly and feebly. 

 Tiie stalks are slender and the blades yellow and sickly, and he all uncon- 

 scious of the cause concludes that the season is not right or some Avorm or 

 insect is preying upon it. Or perhaps it was not planted at the right time of 

 the moon. When the whole secret and difficulty is he was so mucli afraid of 

 being behind his neighbor that he began to plow when his land was not in con- 

 dition for the work. He turned over the surface soil and left it cold and wet 

 and cloddy. The rays of the life-giving sun, and the warm breath of spring, 

 and all the chemical agencies compounded in the laboratory of nature, could 

 not permeate it and fill it with the elements of plant life. Ilence the young 

 greedy corn, which is the grossest feeder that we produce on the farm, that 

 must have food or die, finding but little to subsist upon begins to fade and 

 droop. As to the time and manner of planting I will be brief as possible. 

 Some of the arguments used relative to plowing are equally applicable to plant- 

 ing, and need not be repeated. 



The great danger of planting (premising that the seed has been well 

 selected) is planting too early, especially on our heavy soils. I feel reluctant 

 to take this position, as late planting is thought to betoken a lazy or unthrifty 

 farmer; but the truth compels me to do so, for by this means only can we 

 increase our yield of corn to the point I have indicated. You will please 

 to bear in mind that while I do not recommend too early planting, I am 

 no advocate of too late or very late planting. But of the two, late plant- 

 ing is preferable. Let me tell you why I take this position. The laws 

 •which govern animal and vegetable life are in many respects similar, 

 and in the growth and development from infancy to maturity there is a 

 striking resemblance between the animal and the vegetable. Now every stock 

 raiser knows perfectly well that in order to secure a large, healthy, and well- 

 developed animal, it must be brought into existence with a strong, vigorous 

 constitution, and that afterward such food or nourishment must be supplied in 

 abundance as will conduce to its rapid and continuous growth ; and most im- 

 portant of all, it must not be allowed to stop growing or, in common parlance, 

 to become "stunted." If it should, all your efforts to restore it to its former 

 growing condition will be futile. Do your best afterward, and you will produce 

 a nine-hundred instead of a sixteen-hundred ox, or a two-hundred in place of 

 a four-hundred pound pig. 



The corn plant, although a vegetable, lives and grows upon nourishment — 

 upon what it eats, if you please. All the difference between it and the animal 

 is that in one case the food is sup])lied in a tangible form by the careful keeper, 

 while in the other the elements and inorganic forces which support vegetable 

 life are supplied lavishly by the careful hand of nature, but are hidden away 

 in the soil for iise when needed, imperceptible and but little understood by 

 the masses, but just as real as the food that we furnish to our animals. Now 



